Showing results by publisher "Penguin Random House Australia Audio" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Jett Randall has never felt at home anywhere. By his own rules, he should have left his job driving for the Barbarani family years ago, but something - or someone - has kept him there.
Nella Barbarani believes she doesn't deserve a happily ever after. Since her family fell apart, she's avoided anyone she's related to and embraced her nepo-baby label. But when a rival wine-making family hits the Barbarani Estate with a lawsuit that could destroy Nella's life, she's forced to let Jett bring her home.

This is the story of Christopher Wilder: the surf-loving son of a decorated naval war hero born in the suburbs of Sydney, who became the most wanted man in America - a psychopathic serial killer who slaughtered more than 16 young women in the USA and is the prime suspect in the infamous Australian Wanda Beach murders. Wilder was handsome and charming, and time and time again he managed to convince beautiful young women that he was a fashion photographer looking to help them start a career in modelling.

CSI Told You Lies is a surprisingly moving account of the real forensic pathologists at the frontline of Australia's major crime and disaster investigations. These are the men and women whose post-mortem examinations help the dead to speak. Along with the pathologists, Meshel Laurie, host of the Australian True Crime podcast, also speaks to the homicide detectives, defence barristers and victims' families in this groundbreaking study of the ripple effect of violent crime and largescale natural disaster.

This was Nina Young's shocking realisation in her mid-20s, when she found out from online court records that her estranged father, Allan Ladd, had strangled a woman to death decades before. In prison he'd met Denise, Nina's mother, who was his tutor. Although Denise didn't know the extent of Allan's crime when she fell in love with him, by the time she found out, she was in too deep. She had to flee from him before Nina turned two. A decade after reading the court records, Nina, now a journalist, decided to release a podcast to tackle the questions she'd been asking herself ever since.

In 1994, 14-year-old Stefanie Hinrichs dreamed of owning a horse, leaving school and marrying Keanu Reeves. But God had other plans for the teenager. Her family belonged to a controversial Doomsday cult led by self-proclaimed Messiah William Kamm, also known as the 'Little Pebble', who was building a new promised land for his followers deep in the Australian bush. Stefanie was forced to become the false prophet's child bride - one of 84 mystical spouses chosen by the Lord to bear 27 children for his new heavenly dynasty.

As the pearling ships return to Bannin Bay after a long diving season, 20-year-old Eliza Brightwell nervously awaits the arrival of her father's boat. But when his lugger finally limps in, it brings with it a tale of tragedy: Charles Brightwell, master pearler, has gone missing at sea. Immediately, whispers from the townsfolk point to mutiny or murder, but headstrong Eliza knows her father; she is sure he is still alive. As the Bay swelters under the heat of the approaching wet season, it falls to Eliza to seek out the truth behind her eccentric father's disappearance.

Oxford 1863: young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.

You wake up alone after an emergency caesarean, desperate to see your child. And when you are shown the small infant in the nursery, a terrible thought takes root: this baby is not your baby. No one believes you. Not the nurses, your father or even your own husband. They say you’re confused and delusional. Dangerous. But you’re a doctor - you know how easily mistakes can be made. It’s up to you to find your real child, your miracle baby, before it’s too late. With everyone against you, is it safe to trust your instincts? Or are memories from your past clouding your judgement? This can’t all be in your head...can it?

He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate. But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history and exposed a further series of grisly murders that stunned the Victorian era.

On a remote property in western NSW, eight-year-old Parker fears that something is wrong with his brain. His desperate attempts to control this internal chaos spark a series of events that gallop from his control in deadly and devastating ways. Years later, Parker, now a father himself, returns to the bushland he grew up in for a camping trip with old friends. When this reunion descends into chaos amid revelations of unresolved fear, guilt and violence, Parker must finally address the consequences of his childhood actions.

Careers in the cocaine-trafficking business are usually short. It's not only a dangerous profession, fraught with the possibility of capture and long jail sentences, but it can be deadly if the cartels get to you first. Not for Luis Antonio Navia. For 25 years the Cuban American smuggled hundreds of tons of white powder for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel.

It's winter in Melbourne, and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk. So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he's convinced this is the big case he's been waiting for - the woman's husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched. But things aren't all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of an Australian-born intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century: Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

When a body is found buried near the desolate forest road of Kellers Way, Detective Melanie Carter must identify the victim if she is to have any chance of finding the killer. That's no easy task with fragmentary evidence from a crime committed years earlier and a conspiracy of silence from anyone who might have information. The one person who may be able to help is Julie West.

For forty years David Meagher harboured a secret. Then in mid 2018 a text message from an old school friend forced him to confront his past and finally deal with it. Secrets and Lies is a story about child sexual abuse. The culture that enabled it. How the perpetrator groomed his victims. How it finally came to an end. And how four decades after the crimes were committed his victims embarked on a successful two-year journey to bring the offender to justice. David Meagher delivers an intimate account of the lasting impact of child sexual abuse on survivors.

British mother Rosie Ayliffe thought her 21-year-old daughter, Mia, would be safe travelling around Australia on a gap year. But Mia wanted to extend her visa and in order to do that needed to find 88 days of work on a farm - a requirement that would lead to catastrophic events. Four short days after Mia moved to a hostel in Queensland to take a job on a sugarcane farm, she was brutally murdered.

Dubai is feted internationally as a beacon of modernity: glittering skyscrapers, a cultural melting pot, even a new player in the space race. The city's ruled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, an all-powerful multi-billionaire who counts the Queen and Donald Trump as friends. His kingdom's progressive propaganda defies a medieval underbelly. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the Sheikh's own palace, where numerous women have now risked their lives by sounding the alarm about what's really going on in the United Arab Emirates.

Alex Rainford has it all. He's sexy, charismatic and adored by fans the world over. But he is not all he seems. What spectre from the past is driving him ever closer to evil? And who will fall under his spell along the way?

Detective Sergeant Rick Zadow is angry, unmotivated, unwashed, unkempt and almost entirely reliant on his guide dog, Scout, and voice-controlled personal assistant Siri to make it through each day: one a voice without a body, the other a body without a voice. Left blind after a bullet wound to the head two years before, he is caught up in a workers' compensation battle between two psychiatrists - one acting for him and one appointed by WorkCover - over how much compo he should be awarded.

It should've been the happiest time of Lee Barnett's life. She was married to a man she loved and trusted, Harris Todd, and she was pregnant with her first child. But things quickly turned from dream to nightmare when Harris demanded a divorce. Rich, powerful and well-connected in their hometown of Charleston, USA, he was able to spin the court proceedings in his favour, leaving Lee emotionally and financially devastated. And then came the final blow: she lost custody of her beautiful daughter, Savanna, who was only 11 months old.